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The Colombian Petroleum Engineers Association (Acipet) and the National Hydrocarbons Commission (ANH) organized a two-day seminar called “Near Field Exploration” in Bogotá. HCC was present at the event; we bring a brief summary of the meeting.

In order to evaluate the size of the discovery made at its offshore Kronos-1 well, Anadarko (NYSE:APC) will start drilling its Purple Angel-1 well at the end of December.

The Minister of Mines and Energy Germán Arce said that the Caribbean region has the greatest prospectively for both onshore and offshore exploration of hydrocarbons, and represents the future of the industry.

The Minister of Mines and Energy Germán Arce said that the government will have the hydrocarbons sector in mind when drawing up its tax reform, to accelerate and reactivate exploration activities.

Improved oil prices have not done much to improve exploration activity in Colombia which is far short of past years and seismic activity has mostly been offshore. However according to the Colombian Petroleum Association, the activity could still meet with the association’s goals for the year.

The departments of Caquetá and Putumayo will see a greater concentration of exploration and production activity, and will likely be included in the upcoming Colombia 2016 round.

A report in a national paper caught our eye, as it trumpeted the fact that Colombia ranked third in Latin America when it comes to exploration activity, and that “only Brazil and Argentina were ahead of Colombia in terms of exploration wells”.

The Colombian Chamber of Oil Goods and Services (Campetrol) published an analysis of global oil operators and found several examples of firms which were able to reduce costs, but still invest in E&P and grow reserves. However, it said Ecopetrol (NYSE:EC) was not one of them.

It has been nearly 20 months since the announcement of the first deep water discovery in the Colombian Caribbean at the Orca-1 well, and the discovery is now going through another level of technical evaluation to determine its potential.

The Colombian Chamber of Oil Goods and Services (Campetrol) expects that the oil sector’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) will drop 42% in 2016 to US$4.72B, and has bleak perspectives through 2020 if key policy issues are not addressed.